January 5, 2006

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Speech on the Surveillance of Foreign Sources,
the War in Iraq and Renewal of the Patriot Act
Roswell Rotary Club

Thank you very much. That was a very kind introduction and it’s a real treat to be back with you and so many folks that I worked together with for so many years. It’s a new year, and I wish you a happy one. I’ll tell you this: in my judgment, and this is my 30 th year in elected office representing the people of Georgia, I don’t know that there’s been a more critical year than this one.

There are so many things I could talk about this morning. I know there are no Medicare-eligible people in the room, but if there were, I could talk about Medicare Part D and prescription drug coverage. I know nobody in here is concerned about taxes, but could talk about the need to extend the tax cuts. I know there’s nobody in here that’s really concerned about the cost of natural gas, and I could certainly talk to you about the extension of the Energy Bill that we passed and the natural gas issue. There is a myriad of issues – including the hearings on judges – that are about to come up, but all of those are questions you might ask after my remarks.

Today, I want to talk to you about what is to me, unquestionably the single-largest issue confronting Congress and it is one that as your Senator, I think I owe you to tell you all the facts, so as we make the deliberations and decisions, you will have not only the information that you read, but also the information that I have seen and heard when you make your judgment.

The President is under tremendous attack over the surveillance of foreign sources. Those attacks began some months ago and have intensified. There are those who claim that the President of the United States does not have the authority to listen in on foreign sources for intelligence reasons. Now before I get into making my case on that subject, I want to tell you about my preparation before making the decisions that I’ve made. The very first trip that I made as a member of the United States Senate after I was sworn in was to Baghdad, Iraq. I went there the first weekend of February, this past year 2005. I wanted to see first-hand what we were confronting, talk first-hand to the Iraqi people and I wanted to make judgments for myself.

The second trip I made as a member of the United State Senate was in July, shortly after the attacks began accusing the Bush administration and the Department of Defense for torturing while interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. So I took off and spent a day and a half at Guantanamo Bay to see for myself. Since we went into Iraq when I was a member of the House, I have attended top secret briefings – every one available to us – to be told and to know what’s really going on in the war on terror.

I can tell you unequivocally in everything I’ve seen on the ground, heard in the briefings or observed for myself – that our country is fighting the right war, at the right time, in the right way, in the right place. We are fighting the ultimate war between good and evil. This is not a battle upon which we can turn our backs. It is a war that is as unconventional as any conflict that’s faced the United States of America.

I can tell you first of all on my trip to Iraq, when I talked to Iraqis who still had the ink-stained index finger from their first vote. They talked to me of the hope they had of being able to determine their future and for Saddam Hussein to be deposed.

When I went to Guantanamo Bay and talked to the men and women in our armed forces – and that’s a Navy operation – guarding the 550 most dangerous terrorists you or I could ever see, I talked to them about the importance of our mission and the information that we were deriving – and as I’ve gone to every single briefing and asked questions, I’ve learned over and over again so many things that you ought to know, and they are as follows:

Number one, the United States of America is fighting a digital war with walls that are analog, paper and pen. The terrorists that we fight use the very freedom and resources that you and I enjoy and that they would destroy, to communicate, share information, and plan their evil-doings. For those who have questioned whether or not the President should be listening in on the conversations of foreign sources of known al-Qaeda contacts, I would ask them to simply read the bi-partisan commission report, the 9/11 Commission and their recommendations that faulted us for not having the intelligence we needed to have prevented 9/11.

Now I’m not a hindsight guy and you’re never going to hear Johnny Isakson say ‘somebody should have done something when…’ I’m a foresight guy – but I will tell you in absolute fact that I believe – had it not been for the passage of the initial Patriot Act by the United States Congress in the days following 9/11, there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that this country would have had attacks on our soil in multiple numbers.

The Patriot Act modernized the laws of this country to allow us to do surveillance and intelligence in a digital world. But, we right now have the Patriot Act in limbo – it is extended until February 4. We had a vote on the permanent extension shortly before Christmas and could not get it, and there were a lot of people raising questions about the President listening in on foreign conversations, there are a lot of people raising questions about civil liberties; and all of those are great questions.

All of those are things without which we should be vigilant, and all of those are things about which we should be cautious. But if we tie the hands of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America today or 100 years from now, and don’t allow them to do what it takes to fight a war that is contemporary in its time, then we are doing a disservice to my grandchildren and to their children that follow them.

I am a civil libertarian as much as anybody else and I believe in everyone’s right to privacy. But if a known al-Qaeda terrorist is communicating in the United States of America, our President should have the ability to authorize the monitoring of his or her conversations in this country. And since 1974, the Supreme Court and the U.S. Circuit Courts have all agreed: in the 1974 ruling by the United States Supreme Court, it did not question the authority of the President of the United States to be able to authorize surveillance on foreign intelligence needs. In the Truong case in 1980, and every ruling forward in the United States of America, our federal courts have ruled that the President had that authority.

No less than John Smith, the Associate Attorney General from 1994 to 1997, wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal in December saying without question, the President of the United States has that authority and every President since the ruling in 1974 has done it.

Those that are raising questions about whether or not we should be able to review foreign interests that we know or have good reason to believe would bring ill to you would tie the hands of our country and open the door for attacks on our soil. So as this issue goes forward, and you read in the period leading up to February 4, and the renewal of the Patriot Act, just understand this: your United States Senator that you entrusted to go and vote in your interest has sat in briefing after briefing and seen firsthand the evidence that it is absolutely essential that the President of the United States has that authority.

Secondly, think back, of all of those who have accused the President of doing something wrong or of not having the authority, not a one has mentioned a substantiated charge where anybody’s civil liberties have been violated. The most important point is that we do not need to tie the hands of our intelligence community behind their backs. Can you imagine what it would have been like if on June 1, 1944 – six days before the invasion of Normandy if on the front page of the New York Times the headline was: “Invasion to Take Place on June 6?”

There’s not a lot of difference in that, God forbid, having happened than the New York Times telling the world that we’re keeping under surveillance and listening to foreign intelligence operatives who have called in the United States of America. They don’t need to know that. Now it is right to raise that question if somebody thinks their civil liberties in this country have been tarnished and we have mechanisms to do that; but the intelligence networks of al-Qaeda and those that wish to do us harm don’t need to see it on CNN and every other news media outlet that we generate in this country.

When I went to Iraq and visited General Casey and looked at the headquarters for the joint command, something impressed me that I had never seen – every single command post and every single mess hall had CNN and FOX News 24 hours a day. They carry it 24 hours a day because they want to see what’s being said in America because that’s what al-Qaeda and the rest of that crowd are watching. I want to encourage all of you to read Tom Friedman’s book The Earth is Flat – what it basically means is the internet lowered every barrier so a person in a cave in Tora Bora can communicate fluidly and have access to all the same information a student at the University of Georgia does. And basically that’s true, the barriers have been lowered.

When we passed the Patriot Act and included the authority to monitor things like libraries, there was a pretty good reason for that. After 9/11, libraries are where terrorists went to communicate back home. Go to the Roswell library, you can go online, you can e-mail – we have so many freedoms in this country that I cherish, and so do those who would do us harm. Now we must ensure that the freedoms and liberties are protected, but we also must ensure that they are not used against us by those who would kill and maim the United States of America and her citizens.

In an intercepted letter from al-Zarqawi last year outside of Baghdad, the following statement was in that letter: Americans should know that the deaths in Washington and New York and the losses in Afghanistan and Iraq are only the beginning. That is the mentality of the ringleader on the ground in Iraq today. I can assure you that if we were not fighting him there, we’d be fighting him here.

If we gave him unfettered access to communicate and organize and tied the hands of our intelligence network, he’d probably find a way to a cell and empower them – and that’s not to say that it might now happen anyway – but it is absolutely essential that we see to it that the law enforcement agencies of this country and intelligence agencies in this country and the men and women in harm’s way fighting for us, have access to the very best intelligence they can get in real time.

And if that means surveillance of known terrorists calling into the United States, the President does have and should continue to have the access to be able to do that unfettered, so that we can monitor those that would bring harm to us.

Let me share with you a story that you will find interesting that to me best illustrates warfare in the 21 st Century. I went to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to observe firsthand the allegations being made by people who had never been there, that it was a gulag – and we went down there to see the 550 enemy combatants down there. It was a six story, air-conditioned prison, and I ate the same lunch they ate and it was chicken, macaroni and cheese and green beans. It wasn’t the Roswell Rotary Club, but it was close.

In every cell, every hallway, and the exercise yard, there are arrows pointed to Mecca and the number of kilometers away. On one wall in every cell in every corridor, there is a Koran and they are allowed to pray during the five times a day that is a part of that culture. Those that are not the most dangerous, but are still bad guys, are not in cages like you’ve seen all the time – that was Camp X-Ray that they were in for six weeks while we built the prison – are on the beach in Cuba in open-air cells with a constant 82 degree temperature. It’s not air-conditioned, but there’s a constant sea-breeze. The most compliant – those that are dangerous, but have cooperated in interrogation and intelligence – are in 10-room bunkhouses with a recreation room in the center and they are served cafeteria-style.

It’s not a gulag. They are treated the way anyone would be treated under the Geneva Convention and would hope any American would be treated. But everyday, in Guantanamo Bay, our interrogators are deriving voluntarily, from complying enemy combatants, information that is assisting us on the ground in Iraq.

Most of our interrogators are women, most of the methodology is nurturing. In fact, one of the interrogations I watched through a one-way mirror, I became curious when a McDonalds bag of Big Macs and fries were brought into the room. I was even more quizzical when the terrorist reached in the bag and started eating the Big Mac. I turned to the General and asked him to explain it to me. He said ‘yes, this gentleman has been cooperative lately, and we have a system here – they give us information today, we confirm it on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan and you get your choice of foods the next day, and he wanted a Big Mac.

I saw another guy eating what looked like grapes in some kind of brown syrup. It was a Middle-Eastern dish and they had it provided there in order to get these guys to give us information. Every day we are saving lives in America, Afghanistan and in Iraq, because we’re interrogating people because it’s vital to fighting the war on terror.

And in conclusion for my justification for continuing to allow the President to do what he is authorized constitutionally to do, and for us to stop questioning that which would protect the men, women and children of the United States of America, is to make the following statement: who in this room would have said that on September 12, 2001 that in four years Israel and the Palestinians would be negotiating? That Arafat would be gone? That the leader of the Palestinian front would wear a suit rather than a machine gun? Who would have said that Moammar Qaddafi would have given up weapons of mass destruction? Who would have even guessed that Afghanistan would have free elections and would be an independent, democratic republic? Who would have guessed that Saddam Hussein would be on trial by his own people in his own country? That the Iraqi people would have held free elections in one year and have established a democratic republic? Who would have thought that? No one.

But because of bold leadership and because when America gets attacked, America is at its best, this country, bold leaders – both Democrats and Republicans – voted to authorize the Patriot Act and voted to authorize under Public Law 107-136 that the President can use any reasonable force or any necessary force to protect the United States of America – what has been done in the four years since, what has been done by our men and women in harm’s way, has been nothing short of fantastic.

Now lastly, I want to talk to you about 2 nd Lieutenant Noah Harris, captain of the University of Georgia cheerleaders in 2002, who died in Baghdad last year. He was one of my e-mail pals. You see a lot of us in the Senate and the House don’t just talk about things, but try to let these folks know how much they mean to us. I go to Walter Reed periodically to visit troops who have been brought back for prosthetics or going through rehab. I’ve been to Iraq and communicated with Georgia’s troops and am going back to see the troops in the 48 th who are coming back in April.

When we were attacked in the football season of 2001, Noah Harris joined the ROTC in his junior year because it made him so mad our country had been attacked and thought he ought to serve. You’re not supposed to be able to do that, but they let him in because he made up time. He graduated from the University of Georgia, finished up his ROTC, and got his commission in the United States Army.

He went to Iraq and I got e-mails at least once every couple of weeks from him. He was known as the “beanie baby officer” because in one pocket under his Kevlar vest, he carried his ammunition, and on the other pocket he carried beanie babies, which he gave to Iraqi children. He died fighting to liberate and free the people of Iraq from the terrible despot Saddam Hussein, and from terrorism. His mother Lucy and I became pretty good e-mail friends, and I went to Ellijay to participate in his funeral and I still communicate with Lucy. She ends every e-mail to me saying, ‘please don’t forget how much it meant to Noah to fight for America and what it stands for and to liberate the people of Iraq.’

We are so close to completing the mission. You know, they don’t write about it very much, but the President of the United States went to the United Nations four times asking them to enforce Resolution 1441 – but when they didn’t, we did – and when we went in, he said, we’re going to do three things: we’re going to depose Saddam Hussein, and that’s done; we’re going to allow free elections in Iraq so the Iraqi people can take care of themselves and write a constitution, and they’ve held three free elections and they’ve adopted their constitution; and we’re going to train the Iraqi army in sufficient quantity and quality so they can protect their new democracy, and 214,000 Iraqi troops are trained and we’re coming close to the day when our troops will come home and they will defend us.

But there should be no deadline because if you give a deadline, you give the terrorists a target and they’ll sit there and wait. See, they don’t want to win this war by beating us, they want to outlast us. Well, they’re not going to outlast the United States of America. In honor of Noah Harris, who died fighting for you and me and the freedoms that we’ll enjoy and because of the bold leadership that is willing to do what it takes to compete in a digital world of intelligence, and because this war is a war between good and evil, that I think America in the end is going to be a country of patriots; the Patriot Act is going to be extended and the nay-sayers are going to quiet down and just as America has done in every major conflict that it’s ever entered, we’re going to win the war for the right reasons, and when we go home, all we’re going to ask for is a couple of acres to bury our dead, as we leave a new nation free of despot leaders and terrorists.